August 12, 2009

Teenager attempts sailing solo around the world record

Filed under: Sports by Branko Collin @ 8:51 am

Laura Dekker, 13 years old, is planning to attempt to sail around the world solo between 2009 and 2011, Algemeen Dagblad reports (Dutch). The current record is held by Zac Sunderland of the USA who finished his journey at age 17.

Dekker’s plan has drawn comments from naysayers who feel she is too young, should be in school, and who think her parents are irresponsible. Her response to these comments is one of indifference: “To be honest, I had expected the comments to be even worse. People do not know what they are talking about, so I won’t let it get to me.”

Preparations are going well, according to Dekker’s website. She will be sailing a Hurley 800, a boat made in Twente, and she will send and receive her high school homework using e-mail (she is still looking for a satellite phone, though). Dekker hopes to set sail this September.

(Photo of an entirely unrelated boat by the US Navy.)

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April 29, 2009

Play about the birth of Maigret in Delfzijl

Filed under: Literature,Shows by Branko Collin @ 8:36 am

The story goes that Alfred Hitchcock phoned prolific French detective writer Georges Simenon (1903 – 1989) once, only to be told by the great man’s secretary that he could not be interrupted, as he had just started working on a new novel. “That’s all right,” Hitchcock said, “I’ll wait.”

In 1927 Simenon had his boat Ostrogoth built, a cutter modelled after the fishing vessels of the English Channel. In 1929, when he arrived in Delfzijl, Groningen, he noticed a leak, the repairs of which kept him there for four months. “I still have vivid memories of my discovery of this pink town, surrounded by dikes, with its walls that weren’t meant to keep out attackers, but were there to keep the streets from flooding with sea water during bad weather,” he writes in a companion article to the 1966 Dutch edition of Le Château des Sables Rouges.

He wrote that novel then and there (“I was still in the habit of writing two or three chapters a day back then”), and when he had finished it, he wondered what the next step would be. Drinking genever one morning in café Het Paviljoen—two, three glasses?—he saw the outlines of a broad-shouldered man through the alcohol induced veils of his imagination. A pipe followed, a bowler hat, a warm overcoat with velvet collar. In short, a proper police commissioner.

Theater te Water will stage a play about the birth of this most famous of all French detectives, Jules Maigret, in Delfzijl starting May 12. The play, called Noord Moord (‘Northern Murder’), will be performed on a boat. Where else?

(Link: Dagblad van het Noorden. Photo of a Pieter d’Hont statue of a Georges Simenon character by Wikipedia user Gerardus, who released it into the public domain.)

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March 8, 2009

Impromptu concerts by floating organ

Filed under: Music by Branko Collin @ 8:30 pm

I ran into the good ship Notedop today on the Zuideramstel Kanaal in Amsterdam. It’s basically a floating organ, and I can tell you from personal experience that it can be heard loud and clear dozens of meters away. The Notedop (nut shell) and its owner Reinier Sijpkens can be found wherever they have a canal and a bridge and where good cheer is in need. Sometimes even a swimming pool suffices.

On his website Sijpkens writes (Dutch/English):

I made a small boat, “de NOTEDOP”, designed a miniature church organ and had it built by Henk Smit. Next I created all kinds of mostly classical arrangements “in a nutshell” of 1 or 2 minutes for organ, trumpet and surprise instruments that sound well against a water city backdrop.

I brought odes to people on the bridges of Amsterdam, Utrecht, Leiden, Delft, Gouda, Enkhuizen, Alkmaar, Venice, Oudewater, Bruges, Hoorn and many other cities. You can experience this yourself if you book my water concert or happen to run into me.

Thank god for URLs on the sides of boats. I had been so wrapped up in my own thoughts that I forgot to talk to Sijpkens when I had the chance.

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